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| "People and Buildings"24" X 24", 2 color, 6 plate linoleum print by Coco Berkman |
The making of art can and should be wholly engaging, striving, and ecstatic.
Making your living as an artist is a completely different activity.
Many artists are trying to make sense of what it means to be an artist at this present time. Because of growing human population, the world that we read about in histories of just 50 years ago is dead and gone in every known realm... the arts, sciences, business, and politics.
There are so many people and exponentially so many more artists vying to be noticed, ultimately to be able to derive some income from their art in order to have time and materials to produce their art.
In the past few months I've received several emails with the subject line reading "Gallery Representation”. These are from New York Galleries, with real addresses in the Chelsea arts district. Appeals to artists via email to “hire” the gallery to represent you for just $4.000 a year [can be payable in installments]. These galleries are becoming online galleries for the most part, no longer representing a few chosen artists, rather, hundreds of artists, all paying a fee to have their name associated with a famous name gallery and hope for a chance to have their work noticed. I’m not certain how I feel about this. It seems to be a trend born out of necessity with the art market changing so rapidly and many galleries going out of business in the previous decade.
The art world is certainly in a state of flux frantically trying to figure out ways to reinvent itself and artists themselves are put to task to figure out new ways to get their work out into the world and be seen.
Pragmatic business practices are seldom easy for a mind thats been honed to hang out in more spontaneous realms. It's challenging for me to transition from my basement studio to my 3rd floor apartment and work on putting together show proposals, apply for residencies and grants, create an online presence through updating my website, blogging [which does double duty as a writing exercise], and maintaining a place to sell my work [in my case, my Etsy shop, “StageFortPress”]. I need to be vigilant about limiting my time to these online activities as I've a huge learning curve for anything computer related and my art making time could be sucked up into that void. Easily.
We do need to balance the larger art world with our own art practice. This is essential but not easy.
It is challenging to close the huge door on that racket and bunker down into a quiet space to connect with the muses and be authentic and true to those inner voices that sing to us.
Coco Berkman
Coco Berkman
The Laughing Heart by Charles Bukowski
your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.
click here to visit my website
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.
click here to visit my website
Such a harrowing business. I can't wait to get started in it my self, but it sounds exhausting and distracting for making art. As if there aren't enough distractions. Ugh. Well, your experience can be a guide to others of us just starting out. By the way, that print is perfect for this post but it stresses me out thinking that the problem is competition among ourselves instead of a systemic culture of fear, promulgated daily that we all must fight against together- in art, in survival, jobs in general, hope, community.
ReplyDeleteFor me the pressure comes from having to think of art as a business in the first place. The idea of creating something that is "finished" and saleable is usually paralyzing for me, and once that idea is lodged in the back of my brain, it's often the beginning of the end. I think these expectations can often take the joy out of experimentation, spending countless hours doodling, and the necessity to fuck something up and start from scratch.
ReplyDeleteThis is personally what terrifies me about turning my work into something that can support me financially - will it start to feel like just another job, something I must do efficiently? How can an artist be expected to make art efficiently?
- Cara